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The Four Day Climb of Mt. Rainier reached the 14,410' summit at 7:20 am today. James Bealer, RMI's lead guide for the climb reported a great day of climbing. The heavy marine layer that is sitting around 8,000' was no problem for the team. They climb in near perfect conditions, light winds, clear skies and warm temperatures, and everyone made it to the top!! The team started their descent from the summit at 8:27 am and are in route to Camp Muir.

Congratulations team! 

Thursday, June 23, 2022 7:28 pm PDT

What a day, what a day!

The weather was a little up and down but all things considered allowed us to move to 17k camp. It is a burly move. The morning started we suspect clouds but they soon gave way to mostly clear skies. Of course by time we started to walking the clouds came back and made for some tough seeing. Buy we made it to the fix lines and were greeted by a snowy slope making for better walking. We cruised the fixed lines, dug up our cache at 16,400 and continues our journey up. More fix line bring us to Washburn's thumb and on the buttress ridge. It is an amazing walk with amazing exposure. One last snow slope dips us into our new home. Life isn't easy up here but we make strong work setting up camp and making water. Dinner is currently being served, scrumptious dehydrated Mountain House. We are working on relaxing and recovering for tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be our big day. The weather looks good enough and is our opportunity before the winds pick up and shut the door on us.

Wish us luck!!

RMI Guide Hannah Smith and Team

Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - 12:01 am PT

What do motorcycles and squirrels have in common? They’re both steep hills we climbed on our way to cache our gear at 13,420 feet! From our cache we gained our first views of the fixed lines up to 17,000' Camp and the Messner Coulior. We descended with light packs enjoying the sunshine with beautiful views of the lower Kahiltna flowing south and green tundra stretching as far west into the distance as the eye can see.

RMI Guide Eric Frank

On The Map

Monday, June 27, 2022 - 10:55 pm PT

Today was our third full rest day of the trip and it was glorious! We began by sleeping in and trying very hard to harmonize the incredible snoring coming from our tents.

When the sun drenched our tents and we finally came out for the day, three of us surprised the rest of the team with neon wigs that I brought from the costume closet back in Baltimore. I wore the Orange ‘bob’, Matt rocked the highlighter yellow shoulder length look, and Mr. Hyde Carby stole the show with the flowing pink curls. The wigs brought lots of laughter and Andy was sure to sport the pink curls as the last RMI expedition of the season rolled into 14,000' Camp early this afternoon.

We continue taking each day as a learning opportunity and today we learned that the synch cords at the bottom of your jacket are incredibly handy when trying to use a clean mountain can in 0 degree weather.

We had a delicious rest day feast of more bagels and cream cheese, smoked salmon, and breakfast burritos. We learned our lesson from the last rest day and only ate 2 bagels and one breakfast burrito per person.

To stretch our legs and work out some anxiety about the high mountain above us, we took a stroll across 14,000' Camp to the ‘Edge of the World’, a 6,000’ sheer cliff that drops from 14,000' to the valley below. Grayson belayed us one by one to the edge and we got epic photos courtesy of our personal photographer and guide Ben. 

Back at camp, Andy convened a team meeting. After checking in to see how everyone was feeling, and double checking to make sure we were honestly feeling good, he gave us the good news. The weather on the high mountain for Tuesday and Wednesday is looking terrific and we are going to begin our summit push tomorrow!

We spent much of the afternoon preparing what we will carry up, and what we will cache here at 14 Camp. I’m also personally excited to be reunited with the hula hoop tomorrow when we pick up our cache at the top of the fixed lines. In case you are wondering, I do look like a turtle when the hoop is attached to my pack and I am very slowly moving up the mountain.

Now our job is to rest and prepare for the next 72 hours of intensity and focus as a team - we are feeling strong and are excited to support each other to accomplish our shared goal of summiting The Great One with 100% of our team!

RMI Climber Steve

The Team was thankful to be in the Refugio last night as the wind & rain approached “white squall” intensity. Ships would have been listing in Lago Dickson. The building shook and poorly trimmed windows whistled. We enjoyed a dry but chilly morning hiking up hill to enter the Perros river valley. Most of the day was spent in the heavily canopied forest with occasional views of the surrounding alpine peaks and glaciers. We crisscrossed beautiful streams as we wound up valley to the terminal moraine of the Perros glacier. The wind had only gotten worse so we snapped some photos and headed into camp. Our camp lies in a forest that breaks most of the wind, allows a little sunlight through and sets us up to start tomorrow early for our hike through John Gardner pass. The feet are a little less sore and pack adjustments have been successful.

Thanks for following along,

RMI Guide Mike King

Matias and the Kautz seminar team will spend their last night on the mountain tonight and plan for an early departure off the mountain followed by more training at Basecamp in Ashford.

The guide team have the following to say in reflection of the last week of training:

We have spent the past 4 days and 3 nights experiencing the mountain and the heat that accompanied it this week. Our high point may have only been 9,400’ but an abundant of learning and training was accomplished.

After a scorching first day moving across the Nisqually Glacier, we decided to move to a night schedule, only climbing when the snow hadn’t been tarnished by the blistering sun. Very Denali-esque of us. We hit on rock climbing, mixed climbing, ice climbing, crevasse rescue and many other skills. Hot weather and beating sun created unstable snow conditions and difficult trail breaking. But as one participant said, “It’s not all about the summit on trips like this”, and we feel like we were able to accomplish all our training and learning goals. The wisping clouds float below us like pillows awaiting to catch us on our decent.

RMI Kautz Team,

George, Leif, Lauren, and Matias

The Four Day Climb with RMI Guides Henry Coppolillo and Joe Hoch reached the summit of Mt. Rainier at 5:30 am. Henry reported clear skies with steady winds of 20 mph. The team is on the descend and in route back to Camp Muir.

Congratulations Team!